


Rest and Relaxation

by Dizzojay



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst and Humor, Brothels, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Men of Letters Bunker, Sick Dean Winchester, Worried Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 18:20:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4930189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dizzojay/pseuds/Dizzojay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's feeling a little bit too rested and relaxed; the brothers end up in a race against time to find and deal with the cause before Dean relaxes beyond the point of no return ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My usual rules apply here; not in any way related to canon. Warnings for a few naughty words and mentions of the sex trade (well, come on, it is Dean, after all!).

Sam couldn't understand it.

He sat at the dining table, quietly watching Dean, seated opposite him, attempting to eat the meatloaf he'd spent the afternoon baking, and seemingly struggling to stay awake long enough to avoid faceplanting into it.

If it wasn't so pitiful, it would have been comical. Fighting to keep his drooping, leaden eyelids open, Dean was nodding; one … two … jerking awake with an indignant snort each time on the third nod.

And it was barely six pm.

No, Sam really couldn't understand it.

It would have been nice to think that it was a simple case of Dean being his usual self-neglectful self and not getting enough rest, except for the fact that Dean seemed to be all but hibernating at the moment.

In the rare moments when he wasn't a horizontal, snoring lump, sprawled in unconscious oblivion across his bed, or the couch, or the floor, or – on one memorable occasion – Sam's lap;he might as well have been asleep. This lethargic figure shambling round the house in a listless hollow-eyed daze was certainly not awake in any meaningful sense of the word.

Sam sighed, trying not to notice as Dean apathetically shovelled another forkful of meatloaf into his mouth, narrowly avoiding poking it up his nose in his unco-ordinated fatigue.

Now that Sam thought about the whole situation, Dean had been like this for a good couple of weeks now, maybe more.

The decline had been quite gradual. Sam had remembered Dean retiring to bed earlier than usual on a couple of evenings, and it hadn't even registered as something to concern himself with; he'd just guessed that Dean wanted some private time to do whatever Dean was wont to do during his private time, and Sam wasn't about to start speculating on that. Ever.

Then there had been the sleeping in. Dean had never needed a huge amount of sleep; he'd always functioned quite adequately on the few hours' shut-eye that the brothers' unorthodox lifestyle afforded. He'd generally always been an early riser, if not necessarily a morning person. Come to think of it, he wasn't exactly an afternoon or evening person either, but what Sam did know was that Dean had never been an idler; never one for lazing in bed when he could have been up and about, working on the next hunt.

But as he looked at Dean's glazed eyes staring trance-like across the table at some distant spot in the distance behind Sam's left shoulder, he began to feel the first pangs of concern.

For the first time he noticed that Dean didn't even look well. There was a bloodless pallor to his wan complexion, charcoal-dark smudges surrounding his eyes, deepening the sockets to make Dean's shapely face look unhealthily gaunt. Sam's eyes busily scanned the defeated hunch in which his brother held himself as he yawned widely, displaying a wad of chewed meatloaf. Under Sam's watchful gaze, Dean knuckled his eye, groaning softly. He was all in.

Sam's mind raced. Was it the 'flu? A virus? A spell? Whatever this was, even the copious amounts of coffee that Dean was imbibing wasn't making a dent in it - and that could never be a good sign.

And when Dean pushed away his plate, half his delicious, lovingly-baked meatloaf untouched, Sam knew for sure that something was very badly wrong.

He sighed. And pushed away his own plate; his appetite had followed Dean's and vanished without trace.

xxxxx

Dean blinked blearily as he tried to focus his vision. He felt like crap; complete and utter, total crap.

He couldn't ever remember feeling like this; like he was running on empty, like his battery was flat. He was exhausted in both mind and body, and the worst thing was, there appeared to be no good reason for it.

He couldn't understand it; he just couldn't figure out how he could possibly be coming down with anything. He wasn't a sickly person and so far as he knew, he hadn't been in contact with anyone who seemed sick. He hadn't had any infected injuries or skanky bites on any recent hunts, and he certainly hadn't eaten anything questionable. Heck, he didn't need to now he and Sam had their awesome kitchen here in the bunker. That room was Dean's domain and no creepy germ with an atom of sense would dare to enter its gleaming, tiled space for fear of getting its creepy protoplasmic ass wiped out with enough bleach to turn Yellowstone into Whitestone.

Nope, he wasn't feverish or nauseous; he didn't have a sore throat or sore head or bad guts, he just felt, well, like crap.

It so wasn't fair; the brothers had settled into something of a routine since taking up residence in the bunker, or as much of a routine as their lives allowed. They ate good, nourishing food which Dean cooked, and they had their own beds; clean, comfortable beds that made going to sleep a pleasure, not a cringe-making game of 'dodge the bedbugs'. They had privacy, comfort and security.

Thanks to his newly-acquired love of cooking, Dean had developed a rather embarrassing fixation for grocery shopping which Sam was all-to-happy to enable. Better still, he'd even found, much to his delight, a nice little establishment a few miles away on the edge of town where he could go and find a little personal 'relaxation' now and again.

Right now, life was as close to perfect as it was ever likely to get for the Winchesters and, if anything, Dean should have been feeling like a million dollars. Except the only thing he had in common with a million dollars right now, he reflected, was that he felt spent, green and crumpled.

On the basis that if he wasn't moping around thinking about how tired and wrecked he felt, he'd feel better, he tried to keep himself busy; servicing Baby, indexing the vaults, baking goddamn meatloaf... Bang up job he'd done there. He'd worn himself out by trying not to feel worn out.

And the worst thing was that he could just feel Sam's eyes boring into him; worrying about him and dissecting him. He could hear the wheels in Sam's head turning, cranking their way towards a full-on mother-hen bitch fit which Dean had neither the energy or the inclination to deal with right now.

All in all, the whole situation sucked ass and Dean would be perfectly entitled to feel royally pissed about the injustice of it all.

And he would indeed - if only he could muster the energy.

xxxxx

tbc


	2. Chapter 2

ONE MONTH AGO

Dean smiled as he perused the loaded shelves at the delightfully ramshackle Rockwood Food Store, established 1896. He guessed that the sweet little old lady behind the counter probably dated from that particular era too.

He was so glad Sam wasn't here with him as he stood perusing the store's colourful racks of herbs and spices, most of which he'd never heard of before, some he wouldn't even know how to pronounce. He'd never hear the last of it if Sam found out how excited he was at the prospect of expanding his collection of seasonings; and, well, if Sam had been aware that he'd just spent five minutes standing in the middle of the store pondering the benefits of wholemeal flour over ordinary flour, his life wouldn't be worth living.

He smiled as he tossed a small jar of paprika in his cart to go with the pack of bay leaves that were already in there.

It seemed that having the bunker's awesome kitchen had unleashed a monster. The inner Chef that Dean didn't even know was there had burst forth, like an alien out of John Hurt's chest, only without all the screaming and entrails and stuff, and was mercilessly plying the brothers with massive plates full of delicious nourishing food until they were both fit to bust. Only this morning Sam had been moaning about his jeans suddenly feeling tighter although, Dean noted, it didn't stop him wolfing down the giant bacon omelette Dean had put in front of him only seconds before, and then licking the plate clean.

But the fact was that Dean enjoyed it. No scratch that, he loved it. Every moment he spent in his kitchen, beating eggs or searing steaks or pounding dough was a moment of joy that satisfied his deep-seated need to care for and nurture his family; even if his 'family' only consisted of one person.

And even really, really pissed off wild horses would NEVER drag that admission out of him.

But it also gave him an honest-to-goodness hobby; something he'd never had before, and he was overwhelmed by the sense of pride it gave him. Here was something he could honestly say he was good at that didn't involve death or tragedy and, even more awesome still, it was the key to an unlimited supply of pies.

Did life actually get to be any better?

Sam, for his part, was enjoying Dean's new-found hobby as much as Dean was. Apart from the seriously cool fact that he hadn't had to assault his digestive system with crappy microwave gas-station pseudo-food for weeks, (a fact that Dean had found refreshingly satisfying too), he loved how Dean seemed to be growing, spiritually if not literally, with every meal that he cooked and put in front of his salivating sibling. Dean's fragile self-esteem was expanding as much as Sam's waistline, and that was totally fine by Sam.

And so Dean's trips to downtown Lebanon (such as it was) and the huddle of other small towns and hamlets surrounding them, to find more goodies with which to stock the bunker's already burgeoning larder became an almost daily adventure, which Sam was more than happy to allow Dean to enjoy unhindered. It gave Sam a couple of hours quiet time in the bunker's seemingly endless acres of library to spend some time feeding his mind instead of his stomach for a change.

xxxxx

Dean's spirits were as high as the blistering sun that was bleeding its vermillion arc across the cobalt sky on this particular afternoon. He had decided to explore his latest discovery; the small and unremarkable town of Rockwood, to see what hidden treasures he could find apart from the town's awesomely old-fashioned grocery store. A butchers, perhaps, or a greengrocers? Maybe he could find some of those funny Japanese mushrooms with the rude name that he cooked last week and that Sam had loved so much.

Locking his food store purchases inside the Impala, he lovingly patted her fender; "be back soon Baby," he murmured; "jus' gonna stretch my legs." He would have been prepared to swear that she glanced around and murmured 'mind how you go' as he walked away.

He walked for a few moments without finding anything of note to catch his interest, but he didn't care. The sun's comforting warmth was soothing his soul, the air was filled with birdsong and Sammy wasn't going to starve to death within the next two hours so he found himself in no rush to head back to the bunker.

He realised that his explorations had taken him to the very edge of town, and apart from the line of scattered buildings behind him, he was surrounded by open land; nothing but a quietly humming trail of overhead power cables and a distant grain silo to break the horizon.

Sitting himself down on a low wooden fence that surrounded a small field, he relaxed and was quickly joined by the field's occupant, a sturdy bay horse with kind eyes and a desire for attention which Dean was happy to satisfy. He laughed as he ripped up handfuls of grass and dandelions to stuff into the eager grey muzzle that nudged at him, searching his jacket for treats, and relished the simple pleasure of the moment.

Eventually wresting his sleeve from between the horse's giant teeth, he decided it was time to make his way back before Sam thought he'd absconded. "You be good, big guy, I'll come back and see you again soon," he reassured as he patted the conker-brown lines of his new friend's long arched neck; "an' I'll bring apples," he promised with a wink.

xxxxx

As he began to make his way back to the Impala, he attempted a shortcut through Rockwood's unremarkable backroads, eventually finding himself in a narrow, unfamiliar road. A study in neglect, the huddle of soulless, dusty-grey wooden buildings that looked down on him through shattered-window-pane eyes as he passed by seemed to be either abandoned or empty.

He shuddered, and picked up his pace.

As he strode along the cracked paving that had clearly once been a sidewalk, he chanced a glance up at the aging frontage of a building which appeared fractionally less forsaken than the rest of the street on the basis that it did at least look like it had received a lick of paint sometime in the last thirty years. He became intrigued as he began to hear sounds of life from within; hushed voices and something that sounded like a bassline; the whisper of music played too quietly for the melody to be heard.

His curious eyes travelled upwards over the building's blacked-out windows to a sun-bleached awning which hung over the door, its tattered valance fluttering dismally in the soft breeze that funnelled down the narrow road, and he squinted in an attempt to read the fading lettering that adorned the awning.

After much deliberation, Dean managed to ascertain that the lettering spelled out 'M ssage Parlo r'.

His face stretched into a grin as he scanned the words back and forth.

His new horsey friend was in luck; it looked like Dean would definitely be coming back to Rockwood again.

xxxxx

tbc

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N Don't go looking for Rockwood on a map - it's my own invention!


	3. Chapter 3

It was a full week before Dean ventured back to Rockwood. He had a number of items on his shopping list; carrots, beer, steak, milk, pie, fruit, mushrooms, pie, tomatoes, bacon, eggs, chocolate – lots of chocolate, pie, a family-sized pack of Sam's favourite yoghurts and, did he mention pie?

Plus there was one more stop he planned to make, and that most definitely wasn't written on his list.

xxxxx

Dean let out a deep sigh as two warm, skilful hands slid across his back, pressing him down into the sagging mattress beneath him.

The mysterious establishment he had stumbled across was, thankfully, much more welcoming on the inside than it was on the outside, and 'Adele' had been a most skilful and obliging 'therapist', rounding off his all-too-brief and all-too-awesome and astonishingly energetic visit with the massage promised on the building's dilapidated awning. And what a massage it was too … this woman was a genius.

She was, he noted, one of those women who it was impossible to age. Striking, rather than pretty, he guessed she was in her late twenties. Her thick mass of auburn curls had yet to see a grey hair, but her despite her sweet disposition and outward calmness she bore the countenance of one for whom life had clearly been a long and difficult experience, and was showing no signs of improving.

All the signs were there hidden in the hesitant reserve with which she carried herself, and the weary resignation of her bearing.

But who was Dean to judge? He hadn't exactly lived a life of blameless virtue himself. Circumstances sometimes did that to people, the bastards. Being unlucky or being handed a shit deal in life didn't make you a bad person; Dean could attest to that all too readily.

He'd taken a liking to the sweet and softly-spoken, and very skilful Adele, and thanks to a profitable night at the poker table last week, he would see to it that she did well out of his visit today.

He sighed once more and allowed himself sink a little heavier into the faded grey comforter, admitting glorious surrender to the wickedly nimble hands which seemed determined to take him apart piece by helpless piece.

xxxxx

Adele was intrigued by her current client.

She'd never seen him before; she knew that for sure because she remembered most of her clients – for good reasons and for bad – and this was a face that she knew she would have definitely remembered and would certainly remember for a very long time.

Perhaps he was a passing businessman, or some other kind of transient worker? Whatever he was, there was an aura about him; an air of mystery, maybe even danger, but somehow it didn't seem bad, or in any way threatening. He was, she noted, certainly an improvement on the usual hypertensive salesmen and the sorry-ass mid-life-crisis merchants that normally darkened her door. And on top of everything else he was considerate, careful and, best of all, very, very imaginative.

When she looked into those intense green eyes, the eyes that had mesmerised her from the second he walked through the door on those long, swaggering bow-legs of his, they had looked back at her as if she was a real person; someone who actually meant something to the world, someone who meant something to him. She didn't see the look she saw so often in the eyes of her usual clients. There was no contempt there, no pity. All she saw was complete acceptance. An empathy, almost like he was someone else who existed on the edge of acceptable society and just, well, understood.

The biggest question in her mind was one of why the hell a guy like this would need to call upon the services of a lady of her particular talents? Surely, he could have had the pick of anything with oestrogen within any given hemisphere? As far as Adele was concerned, it only added to his mystique.

It was an intensely powerful allure.

But, beneath the swagger, the wink, the smirk, and the well-practiced and highly impressive performance that had taken her breath away, she couldn't help but imagine for reasons she would probably never understand that this man was unbearably, intolerably lonely, and it made her smile to think that for a brief moment she had the power to bring him the warmth of a loving touch that he craved.

As she looked down on the elegant lines of his firm, broad shoulders beneath her oiled palms, her smile faded.

Her attraction was too strong. This should not happen again.

xxxxx

Dean yawned as he collapsed, rather than sat in the Impala. Damn, he was mellow; Adele had definitely earned every cent of her payment, plus the little extra besides. He hadn't realised how much he needed that little session … relaxation with a capital aaaaaah. He was just going to sit right here and close his eyes for a couple of minutes. There was no way he was going to chance driving while his brain was still in this standby mode, he'd just end up dumping Baby in a ditch, and that wouldn't be a good way to round off what had been a fine day so far.

Folding his arms across his chest, Dean pulled in a deep breath and closed his eyes as his head dropped limply back onto the top of Baby's driver's seat. He smiled softly as his breathing slowed and consciousness began to recede.

When he opened his eyes again, it was to the sound of his phone ringing.

He fumbled blearily in his pocket, and just managed to pick up the call a split-second before the caller hung up.

"Dude," Sam's voice was sharpened with a hint of concern; "how long does it take to buy a few damn groceries?"

"What, huh?" Dean responded; it wasn't exactly the wittiest of rejoinders, but it was the best he could manage under the precise circumstances.

"Dean?" Sam prompted impatiently; "what the hell's going on?"

Dean blinked, glancing down at his watch as he did so. Crap, it was five o'clock; how the hell had he been asleep for four hours?

"Uh, I musta just, uh, dozed off," Dean mumbled, stifling a yawn with a groan as he stretched the kinks of a long, uncomfortably cramped sleep out of his back.

"What?" Sam snapped, "You fell asleep?"

"Yeah, in the Impala," Dean responded, running his fingers through his sleep-muzzed hair; "don't sweat it Sammy, I'll be back in thirty."

Sam frowned as a click signalled the end of the call, and tossed his phone down on the table, shaking his head in disbelief as he did so. Dean had been working way too hard in that damn kitchen.

Sam made up his mind - he going to be calling for pizza tonight.

xxxxx

tbc


	4. Chapter 4

"Dude, quit fussing; it's really not necessary for you to come to the grocery store with me." Dean glared at his brother; "it was just a stupid freakin' bug, I ain't gonna drop dead on a supply run."

"You keep telling yourself that," Sam replied, unmoved from his purpose as he slid into the Impala's drivers' seat, ignoring Dean's attempts to take up space there himself. "You fell asleep for four hours in the car a few weeks ago, and that's while she was parked up; supposing you'd been doing eighty down the highway?"

Dean grumbled something unintelligible and most probably obscene. "But Sam," he whined; "I'm going damn well stir crazy stuck back at the bunker - the fresh air is jus' what I need. You'll cramp my style."

Sam stared at Dean's haggard face; "how much style d'y need to go and buy cheese?" He asked dryly.

He knew he'd won the argument when a mumbled snort of 'bitch' was followed by a sulky silence.

The fact was that Sam was worried. Dean had definitely been out of sorts ever since the episode in the Impala. He had been existing in a listless daze for much of the last few weeks, his dwindling periods of alertness had been spent researching hunts he wasn't fit to participate in or trying to keep himself occupied in his beloved kitchen; an activity that Sam had regrettably had to curtail after Dean had accidentally set fire to his sleeve in a moment's inattention.

But now, Sam had to concede that stopping Dean's regular supply runs had meant that the Winchester larder was suddenly bare, and a shopping trip was essential before the hungry and bickering Winchesters were reduced to eating each other.

Dean had shown a refreshing enthusiasm for an opportunity to escape his enforced incarceration.

That was until Sam had laid down the rules.

xxxxx

Adele wearily scraped her flaming tresses up into an unruly ponytail, half of which had escaped before her hands had even made it back down to her sides. It was set to be a quiet day. Almost every day was a quiet day; it was the nature of her work that it was mainly after the sun went down that her clients appeared. Her nights were busy – her days were largely empty.

She paused for a moment as her mind drifted to all of her clients. She never knew their names; she never usually troubled to find out. They were just faceless men; loners, losers, strangers. Anonymous figures who held no interest for her.

Except one.

A month ago, he had appeared on her doorstep and turned her life inside out. The one client she truly wanted to get to know better and, the one client she couldn't go near.

It was like the punchline to a very bad joke.

She took solace in the fact that he was just that transient worker she'd had him pegged for; a ship that passed in the night. She'd never see him again, never again see those Olympian shoulders or that heart-melting smile that made her head spin. And, of course, it was better that way.

Yeah? So why was it so hard to tell herself that?

She was disturbed from her musings by a sudden knock on the door. Given that she wasn't expecting any clients, this had to be the mailman, or some passing salesman or maybe some joker asking if she wanted to find God.

She reflected on the irony of her last thought when she opened the door and found a familiar face smiling back at her.

"Hey!"

Horror and joy crossed her face at the exact same moment as her traitorous heart gave a little leap of excitement.

"Dean?" It was the only coherent word she managed to utter in her shock.

"That's me," he smiled, folding his arms across his chest as he leaned casually against the wall, hoping she wouldn't notice that his main reason for doing so was to find some much needed support before he collapsed in a heap on her doorstep.

She felt herself slump against the doorjamb. Why? Why does he have to come here with those sparkling green eyes that speak a million secrets and those endless, sweetly-bowed legs.

She sighed as her eyes roamed enthusiastically; not to mention that goddamn edible ass.

"So," Dean's unusually pallid face lifted into an impressively genuine smile; "I'm in town today, and I ain't been out much recently. I'm actually with my brother because I've been a bit under the weather and he's gone all friggin' mama bear on me and wouldn't let me drive."

She pulled in a deep breath, nodding hesitantly.

"Anyways, I've slipped my leash," Dean continued; "and just dumped him in the coffee shop with a latte and a copy of New Scientific because if I don't get a bit of 'me-time' away from him and his frettin', I'm gonna start throwin' punches at the big girl."

She nodded again, seemingly incapable of stringing an articulate sentence together.

"So …" Dean began to fidget awkwardly at the distinct lack of response; "have you got an hour? I'd like to spend my me-time here. With you!"

Adele wanted to scream 'YES' at the top of her voice, but instead chewed nervously on her lip as she forced herself to maintain an aloof distance.

"It's not a good time," she stated flatly.

"Oh really?"

"Yes. Sorry, I'm busy."

Dean glanced over her shoulder into the empty room behind her."

"Seriously?"

"Well, I will be, I'm preparing for … look it's really not a good time."

The disappointment written across Dean's face was so heartbreaking it was almost comical; "are you sure? It's just that we kinda got along really good when I was here last time; I don't find that sort of customer service too often," he smiled cheekily; "you were very thorough – and energetic – and God knows, I could seriously do with an energy boost right now."

Adele closed her eyes, groaning quietly in response to his last words. She hadn't missed how grey and haggard his handsome face was suddenly looking, and she knew that there was only one thing that would restore him to his former good health; and getting up close and personal with her wasn't it.

"How about you make yourself busy for me until your, uh, clients turn up?" The quirk of his eyebrow was like a corkscrew through her heart; "I'll pay you for the full session."

It was with a superhuman effort that Adele shook her head. When all she wanted to do was to tell any future clients to go screw themselves and save her the bother so she could spend the rest of the day with Dean, she managed to force the word 'no' out between clenched teeth. The effort was almost painful.

"No Dean, I can't."

It was a measure of the man that he didn't argue or rail against her, he simply nodded in weary resignation and looked dejectedly at the ground.

"You okay?" he eventually asked, looking back up at her pained face after a short silence.

"Yes, fine," she lied; "you should go."

He nodded; "okay, I'm going." He stood up straighter, motioning to leave, when he paused; "just tell me, did I do something to upset or offend you? If I did, look, I'm sorry."

"No," she sighed; "you didn't, not at all, I just … can't. Please go."

There was another tense pause before Dean spoke again. "Is someone threatening you?" he asked, concern suddenly tightening his features; "are you in trouble or in danger? Is someone forcing you to do this?" He tried to glance behind her back into the room.

"No," she snapped, exasperation sharpening the edge of her voice; "I'm fine, really. I just can't … go away, please, just go."

Dean let out a long exhale of defeat. "Okay, you win," he sighed; "jus' stay safe, okay?"

He turned without a backward glance to walk away.

xxxxx

"Dean …"

Pausing for a moment, Dean stopped and slowly turned back toward the voice.

"I'm sorry," Adele whispered miserably; "I'm really sorry."

Dean turned and smiled sadly; "it wasn't just the sex you know," he murmured; "you're a cool chick, I dig you." He reached out and took Adele's hand in a gesture of unity and forgiveness in a completely reflexive act; his movements so fluid and subtle, she barely had a moment to look down from the sincerity in his eyes and process what was happening before she felt her hand wrapped his his.

She screamed in horror as he let out a pained gasp, eyes rolling back into his head as he convulsed and crumpled unconscious to the ground.

xxxxx

tbc


	5. Chapter 5

Sitting beside the hospital bed, Sam rubbed his tired eyes and sighed. The motionless figure lying in the bed, surrounded by a terrifying jumble of wires and tubes had, only a few hours ago, been his larger than life brother; maybe a little under the weather - by his own admission - but certainly not somebody who was at deaths door.

It was only those few hours ago that Sam had received a call on Dean's phone from some hysterical girl he had never met. He managed to glean from her incoherent sobbing that Dean had just collapsed unconscious on her doorstep and wasn't moving; she wasn't even sure if he was breathing. He had no idea how she knew Dean or even that she knew who he was, but he guessed that as his cell number was the last number in Dean's call log, and the first on his contact list, she'd just taken pot luck and called it. He was grateful that she had managed to retain a scrap of rational thought in the midst of her panic.

Those next few minutes had been a blur. Sam, abandoning his latte and a hitherto fascinating article about global warming, had headed across the small town as fast as his long legs had ever moved before, to find Dean's inert form being irgently loaded into the back of an ambulance while a distraught redhead, panda-eyed with creeping mascara looked on.

Managing to grunt a brief thanks, Sam had otherwise barely acknowledged her existence before clambering into the back of the ambulance, without troubling to ask permission first, to join Dean on a blue-light ride to the hospital.

xxxxx

Sam yawned and pulled his broad shoulders back into a long, hard stretch. Across the muted silence of the room, the beeping of the heart monitor was a soporific backbeat to the whooshing of the ventilator, and Sam found his eyelids beginning to droop despite the state of high alert he had just spent the afternoon in.

Fighting sleep, Sam used the hypnotic rhythm to try to digest what he'd been told by the middle-aged doctor who had examined Dean in ER.

He'd known straight away by the look on the man's face that the news wasn't good. Did Doctors have to go to school to practice that face? Because they all sure had the same damned scary expression when they had unpleasant news to impart. They must spend hours practicing the sighing and hand-wringing that goes along with the furrowed brow and the sonorous monotone of the sentence which always starts with 'I'm afraid …'

As far as Sam could tell from the doctor's explanation, they had taken Dean for scans and tests of just about every kind they could think of; of every part of him that they could think of. They'd prodded him, poked him, taken blood, then taken more blood. They'd measured every aspect of Dean they could reasonably measure; his heart rate, his temperature, his pulse; heck, Sam was sure they'd have measured his IQ if they'd thought it would have done any good. But through it all, Dean had remained utterly, terrifyingly still. Seemingly existing just on the cusp of life; only just breathing, only just living.

When the doctor had finally delivered his verdict, it didn't instil Sam with a lot of comfort. The plain fact was they had no idea what was wrong with Dean. Dean's body simply seemed to have shut down and no-one appeared to have the faintest idea why.

The fact that they had no idea what was causing it meant they had no idea how to treat it or reverse it. They had Dean scheduled for another barrage of tests and scans tomorrow. By the end of this whole experience, Sam mused miserably, there wasn't going to be a single atom of Dean's body that hadn't been listened to, studied in detail, zapped with microwaves, discussed, argued over and photographed both inside and out.

But in the meantime, while all this was going on, all Sam could do was to sit beside his stricken brother's bed and feel pathetically helpless.

He had to do something; he was going to go mad if he just sat here staring at Dean's slack, grey face, vainly willing him to open his eyes while he counted each breath as if it might be Dean's last.

He knew exactly what he had to do.

xxxxx

Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he absently rubbed his thumb across its glass surface, relishing its coolness against his heated skin.

That girl must know something, anything.

What in hell happened? A person doesn't get that sick with no warning signs. Did Dean have a seizure? Did he puke? Did he complain to her of feeling ill? Did she do anything to help him before he flaked out? Sam's head whirled with questions and theories; all warring for dominance within his addled mind, with not one single answer to be found among the melee.

He began to feel slightly sick.

When he'd finally arrived, panting and wild-haired at the location identified by the mysterious lady in her angst-ridden phone call to him, Sam's mind hadn't exactly been focussed on anything but the unconscious body bundled up in layers of grey blankets and strapped into the paremedics' stretcher; Dean's body. However, he had somehow managed to notice the jaded sign on the canopy of the aging building. The building proclaimed to be a 'massage parlour'; a brothel in other words. Well, that would certainly go some way toward explaining why Dean was so keen to dump Sam in the coffee shop and disappear off by himself.

It could have almost been funny, except for the fact that this pearl of wisdom threw up another raft of questions. Had Dean taken anything? Drunk anything? Worse still, had she given him anything?

There were just too many questions; gaps that needed to be filled. She seemed like a decent enough woman, and she had called Sam and the ambulance when Dean collapsed, so she seemed to care about him. Sam just hoped she would care enough to give him some answers if he went to see her tomorrow.

Surely anything she could tell him would help the baffled medics and that would, in turn, help Dean.

And God knows, Dean needed all the help he could get right now.

xxxxx

Leaning forward, Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and pulled in a deep sigh. He slowly flexed his neck as he folded his arms across his knees, settling in for his long vigil. Beside him, Dean lay still and silent, a lifeless shadow of the thrumming ball of energy he had been before this mysterious condition took him and crushed him.

Sam became so lost in his thoughts that he barely noticed the muffled hum of his cellphone as it began to vibrate in his clenched palm.

xxxxx

tbc


	6. Chapter 6

Standing up shakily, Sam walked slowly across the room as he answered the call. He arched into a long, much-needed stretch, feeling all manner of joints in his neck and back popping and crackling, like some great big Sam-sized bowl of cereal.

"Yeah, hi," he mumbled barely coherently across the back of a long sigh.

There was a moment's pause on the other end of the line, until a voice eventually sounded; "is that Sam?"

The voice was female, and Sam couldn't help but notice how it sounded exhausted and broken, barely more than a whisper. He felt a pang of sympathy.

"Uh, yes, I'm Sam;" he replied; "who's this?"

His reply was another long, nervous pause.

"Are you the brother Dean was talking about?"

Sam's jaw clenched in suspicious apprehension; "who is this? Tell me who you are and I'll tell you who I am."

"I'm Adele, the one who called you," the voice replied after seemingly considering their answer for an age; " I called you this afternoon when Dean was, uh, taken ill."

"Oh," Sam replied, seemingly lost for a more articulate answer. "Yes, I'm Dean's brother."

"How is he?" She asked flatly, Sam instantly noticed the distinct lack of any kind of anticipation in her voice, almost as if she was expecting a negative answer.

Chancing a look over his shoulder, Sam dared to hope that he might find Dean sitting up in bed, bright eyed, animated and moaning about the quality of hospital coffee.

He was disappointed.

"Not good," he replied economically, unsure of how much information he should be giving away to this woman.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"The doctors have no idea what's wrong with him," Sam blurted, his voice breaking as the words gushed from his mouth; "please, if there's anything you know about what happened this afternoon, please tell me;" he pleaded. "We need something – anything – that could give the doctors some clues."

"I can," she replied.

Sam's ears pricked; "You can, what? Tell me something?"

"Yes," she replied; pulling in a deep breath as if she was fortifying herself for an unpleasant task; "I can do better than that – I can tell you what's wrong with him."

Sam felt himself stumble as the strength momentarily drained out of his legs, turning his knees to water.

"What? How?" he gasped.

"Not over the phone," she whispered; "and not at the hospital - I can't be near Dean."

Sam's first instinct was to bristle angrily as his full sense of self-preservation kicked in, vociferously warning him that this was most probably a trap and that this bitch was no doubt setting him up to suffer the same fate as Dean.

Despite that, however, he felt himself turn back toward Dean, pulled there by his brother's plight. The sight of Dean's stricken form, lying here in ER, so horribly still and, for all intents, lifeless, fired up his full protective instincts. He had to do something for Dean; if there was a shred of goodness in this woman that could help, he had to risk it.

"Why not? Why not over the phone or here? he ground out between clenched teeth.

"I need show you; I can't just tell you." She replied cryptically; "and, as I said, I can't be near Dean. Meet me at my doorway in one hour." The response was final, brooking no discussion as the line went dead with a click.

Sam glanced between the bed and the phone that he held in his shaking hand again.

What the hell was that all about? Within him, his hunter's common sense was fighting a full-on war with his overwhelming need to help Dean. Everything about this was wrong. Under normal circumstances, he would never even dream of tamely pottling along a dark alleyway to meet some shady lady who apparently possessed the unlovely ability to strike perfectly healthy people down, leaving them in a coma.

Sam was sure that this, however, comfortably qualified as not normal circumstances; the fact that Dean was the one lying in a hospital bed, struck down in one of her apparent comas testified to that.

What did she have to show him that was so special that she couldn't tell him over the phone? Why couldn't she 'be near Dean'?

Sam's head spun with all the whys and what-ifs; so much so that he had to return to his seat beside Dean's bed and sit down again before he fell down.

Eventually, he reminded himself sternly that he had been planning to go and see her tomorrow morning anyway. Okay, so now he was going to see her tonight; admittedly on her terms, not his, but was that really so different? The idea of going to see her had been a good one when Sam first thought of it, but now it was a reality, he could think of a thousand reasons why he shouldn't go.

xxxxx

Kneading his brows to stem a blossoming headache, Sam gazed sadly down at the bed. The soft rhythmic whoosh of the ventilator, filling Dean's debilitated lungs with precious life-giving air, salved his mind for a moment, clearing his thoughts.

Yes, he hated the thought of leaving Dean so helpless like this; and yes, Dean could take a turn for the worse while he was away, but then that's what the doctors and nurses were there for. His visit to this woman could hold the key to Dean's recovery; he had to try. He would go. And he would take a weapon, or maybe two – Just in case.

Jumping to his feet, Sam pulled his jacket off the back of his chair, shrugging it over his shoulders. He made a point of keeping his movements swift and purposeful, making sure that he would get on his way before he had a chance to change his mind.

He paused before he left, leaning forward to tenderly place a palm across the top of his unconscious brother's head.

"I've got to go out for a couple of hours dude," he explained softly; "I'm gonna try to find something that'll help. Don't you dare go anywhere while I'm gone, y'hear me?"

He hesitated, unconsciously willing a response out of Dean.

He pretended that he wasn't bereft when none came.

xxxxx

tbc


	7. Chapter 7

The soft light of the waxing moon didn't go very far towards improving the appearance of the worn-down neighbourhood where Sam's life had taken a sickening plunge south all those hours ago, and along which he was currently walking.

Even though he was a big guy, in the peak of his physical fitness, carrying a gun together with a large knife tucked into the waistband of his jeans; every nerve in his mind and body was jangling with the oppressive menace that pervaded the shadows of this dilatory back street he was wandering down.

He scanned the sad, crumbling shells that passed as buildings either side of him, pausing only as his eyes locked onto the familiar faded awning.

Standing in the darkness beneath it was an equally familiar figure, slender and delicate; cautiously hiding in the shadow.

On catching sight of him, she stepped out from under the awning to greet him; the moonlight catching her hair and illuminating the copper sheen of her wavy tresses into a riot of flaming chestnut.

"Sam," she acknowledged him quietly with a faint nod, making no attempt to reach out and shake hands. She stood before him, defensively hugging herself, whether from nerves or cold, Sam couldn't tell.

He gave her a perfunctory nod in return. "Ok, so what about Dean," he prompted bluntly; thrusting his hands into his jacket pockets to make sure he could feel the handle of the gun and the hilt of the knife secreted there.

She let out a long sigh; "come in," she beckoned, opening the door to her establishment.

Sam hesitated, before reluctantly following her into the gaudy reception area, giving one final glance round back into the street before the door closed behind him and he heard the click of the key turning in the lock.

Before he'd even had a chance to check out the room and, more importantly, his nearest escape point, she was already engaging him in conversation; "I guess you've worked out what I do for a living?" It was a statement that doubled as a question.

Sam nodded; "yeah, I know."

She stood, studying him for a moment, and she saw it in his face immediately; that same complete lack of judgement that she'd seen and appreciated so much in Dean. She felt herself warm to the tall young man who stood staring coolly back at her.

"And I guess you know that Dean came to me a few weeks back to, uh …"

"Yeah, yeah I know," Sam interjected, a note of urgency in his voice as he raised a hand in a desperate attempt to spare himself from being exposed to any toe-curling details of Dean's more imaginative proclivities.

"I haven't always done this, you know," she explained; "once upon a time my life was very different to this – about as different as it could be."

Sam glanced at his watch in an unspoken gesture which screamed 'get to the good bit'.

She smiled, seemingly understanding Sam's impatience and continued. "You know, she began; "when I first met Dean, there was something mysterious about him, something exciting; almost dangerous." She paused for a moment before continuing; "something irresistible."

Sam grimaced as he tried not to think of any of those words in the context of his brother, but silently prompted her to continue.

"He fascinated me and thrilled me;" she continued, a wry smile crossing her face; "and I did something a woman in my line of work should never do; I became deeply attracted to him."

"On his first visit, I noticed the tattoo on his chest, and I commented on it," she paused in thought for a moment. "He was very dismissive of it; muttered something about being a member of a biker club, and said no more on the matter."

The momentary twitch in Sam's expression from cautiously attentive to alarmed didn't go unnoticed.

"The thing was, I knew I'd seen that tattoo before," she shrugged; "but I didn't think much more about it because, well, what can I say, your brother is a very distracting man."

Sam desperately didn't want to go there with that particular image, but then thinking instead of the image of Dean, lying helpless and silent, unconscious in the hospital bed, was even more disturbing. Dean was, indeed, a very distracting man.

Adele sighed, absently twisting ringlets of her hair around her index finger as she considered her next words. "It was only yesterday that I realised where I'd seen that symbol before," she eventually explained; "very many years ago." She looked up intently at Sam, brown eyes locking onto brown eyes; "your brother is a hunter."

At her revelation, Sam's fingers migrated back to his pocket, curling around the hilt of his knife. He felt his heart quicken and his throat tighten as he fought against himself to find his voice.

"I don't know what you mean," he bluffed unconvincingly.

She nodded, equally unconvincingly. "The only reason why I'm talking to you tonight is because of that fact," she explained; "I'm guessing that if Dean's a hunter then you either understand what he deals with, or maybe you're a hunter too. Whatever, I'm guessing you're a man who can suspend disbelief."

Sam pulled in a deep breath as he fought to maintain his composure. "Get to the point," he murmured darkly.

Adele took a deep breath; "Sam, I remembered Dean's tattoo because I'd seen it before. I saw it on the arm of the hunter who made me into what I am today."

"A hooker?" Sam responded sharply, instantly regretting his tone.

Adele looked up at him through her long, untidy fringe.

"Yes, she replied hesitantly; "and no …"

"I was cursed," she explained. "By that hunter."

Sam's eyebrows took a slow march upwards; "cursed?" he gasped.

Adele nodded; "he did it at the request of my husband's mother after I was unfaithful."

"Unfaithful?"

"Yes," Adele's eyes dropped to the ground; "I was nineteen years old; lonely and foolish. Trapped in a loveless marriage and I admit I became close to a handsome young farmhand who treated me with just a hint of the affection that I craved so much."

"I'm sorry," Sam murmured.

Adele smiled her gratitude before continuing. "She told me that as I liked whoring myself out to every man who came my way, she would see to it that I got to do it for eternity."

Sam stared, pebble-eyed, at her; "eternity?"

"Yes," Adele replied; "her hunter friend cursed me, and here I am; and this is why I can only talk to someone like you who will, I hope, believe what I'm going to tell you."

"What?" Sam's heart hammered against his ribs.

"Sam, this all happened in 1845," Adele sighed; "The hunter's curse turned me into a succubus."

xxxxx

tbc


	8. Chapter 8

Sam's head was whirling as he made his way back to the hospital room following his strange meeting with Dean's unwilling nemesis.

Adele's sad story had kept him riveted. Despite his better judgement and initial scepticism, he had found himself dropping all pretense at hostility toward the hapless succubus; focussing his hatred, instead, on her family; the people she should have been able to turn to – the people who corrupted and destroyed her.

The only daughter of wealthy Massachusetts landowners, she told how she had been forced into an unhappy marriage at sixteen with a man twice her age, a move engineered by her father in a last-ditch effort to boost the family's dwindling fortunes.

Young, lonely and frightened; utterly helpless at the hands of an abusive and neglectful brute, she had sought solace with the only man who showed her any hint of affection; a handsome and endearingly simple young farmhand. Mistaking his kindness and sympathy for love, she had followed the poor man around like a lovelorn puppy until eventually he succumbed, as any healthy red-blooded young man would, and took her to his bed.

It hadn't taken long for their dalliances to be discovered, and she recounted the terrible day that her husband, in a fit of murderous rage, had taken care of the unfortunate farmhand with the help of his despicable friends and a length of rope.

Adele, distraught and broken, was left to the mercy of her mother in law; a member of the only surviving branch of a family decimated over a century before at the Salem Witch Trials, with a long line of ancestors who had saved their skins during that terrible time by renouncing their witch origins and joining the ranks of the witch-finders and hunters that had persecuted their kind over the centuries.

This, however, didn't mean that they hadn't retained a certain amount of knowledge, and the vile woman was quick to use her family's long-standing experience to devastating effect on her errant daughter in law.

Adele hadn't even known what a succubus was when she became one.

xxxxx

Condemned to a life of subsisting on the sexual energy and life force of her male victims, she had learned quickly that she needed to move around the country, never putting down roots in one place too long so that folk didn't begin to notice that she never aged. Her itinerant lifestyle took her everywhere, to places she hadn't even known existed, eventually ending up in Rockwood.

Setting up business as a prostitute wherever she went enabled her to survive. A steady stream of men providing only physical energy without the more powerful, and draining, emotional bond meant that she didn't do too much damage to them. She could take what she needed and leave them no more debilitated than they would be after a hard session at the gym. Just faceless, nameless men; they didn't care about her and she didn't care about them. It was a simple business arrangement which, while not pretty, worked perfectly well.

The problem arose when love presented itself. It had only happened a handful of times in all the many years she had been operating, that she had developed feelings for a client. It had to happen occasionally; she was, after all, beneath the twisted shell of the succubus, a living, breathing woman. When an emotional bond was added into the equation, she knew from the bitterest experience, there could be no happy endings.

She knew she was destined never to experience love, and that was as much a part of the curse as the monster she had been forced to become.

The force of her desire drained the very life and soul out of any unfortunate man who found himself the focus of her attraction. She had learned long ago that when that was the case she was condemned to avoid the man, or kill him.

Then Dean had come along and turned up on her doorstep with his broad shoulders and long bowed legs, his flirtatious but respectful manner and his sweetly sinful smirk. Those moss-green eyes that had looked at her as an equal and that deep, honey-sweet voice that had talked to her with such care and compassion had reeled her inescapably into his irresistible presence, and for a short time Adele had gone willingly. Their assignation had been, for her, a rare exercise in mutual pleasure, with Dean proving himself to be a thoughtful and generous lover; making her feel, for that brief, beautiful time, like she was the centre of his universe.

From that moment he was doomed.

The strength of the attraction she had developed for him had made her touch deadly; and pushing him away had been the hardest thing she had ever done.

But his returning touch – the briefest of touches, a small gesture of comfort and forgiveness had almost destroyed him, and she knew that now was the time it had to stop. She could never risk this happening again.

xxxxx

Sam let out a deep sigh as he lowered himself down into the seat next to his unconscious brother. Placing the flat of a hand across Dean's chest, hew momentarily lost himself in its hypnotic rise and fall.

It had been a difficult evening. Hearing all about Dean's sexual exploits in vivid detail was not a way Sam would have ever wanted to spend an evening. When this whole mess was all over and resolved, Sam promised himself that he would go out and get catastrophically drunk on the strongest alcohol he could find in the vain hope that he might obliterate the particular set of brain cells that had retained this information and would no doubt torture him with it for the rest of his life. But that could wait; right now he was being tortured by much more immediate and devastating concerns.

He looked down at Dean's slack face; his closed eyes, the dark crescents of his eyelashes fanned out against the ivory pale skin stretched taut across his cheekbones, and concentrated for a moment on the only sounds in the room; the monotonous whoosh of the ventilator and the faint beep of the heart monitor. Cold, impersonal sounds, but in the absence of Dean's voice, the only proof Sam had that Dean was still alive. He clung to those sounds in desperation; they were all he had left of Dean.

xxxxx

Sitting back into the unyielding plastic of the hospital chair, Sam lifted the lid of his laptop, readying himself for a night of research. He had thought that matters as they stood couldn't get much worse; that is, until Adele told him the final part of her story.

She knew how Dean could be saved. It wouldn't be easy and it wouldn't necessarily be pleasant, but either way it would be down to Sam to do; he would have to lift the curse.

Doing so would heal Dean's body of the debilitating effect of her powers, and it would restore Adele back into the inoffensive human woman she had once been.

Except that once restored, she would no longer be the flame-haired young maiden who was so terribly wronged all those years ago, she would be a woman of one hundred and seventy years.

And both she and Sam knew the logical conclusion of that transformation.

xxxxx

tbc


	9. Chapter 9

Dean was lost, floating unconsciously in a haze of nothingness. His mind and body felt leaden; all he could do was sleep, yet somehow still be aware enough to hear Sam's voice somewhere far away in the distance. He couldn't hear Sam's words, but he could hear the timbre of his voice and that's all Dean needed to hear to know that Sam was worried out of his mind.

People came and went. Unfamiliar voices accompanied unfamiliar hands that poked and prodded him in places where he really didn't want to be poked and prodded; well, not by them anyway.

He wanted so much to comfort and reassure Sam, but the words wouldn't come; his mouth wouldn't move. He couldn't even lift his eyelids to look at his brother as his traitorous body simply lay in immobile silence, refusing to function. All it wanted to do was to rest, and sleep; for ever.

xxxxx

An evening of sitting on a far-too-small and far-too-hard plastic chair, squinting at a laptop screen in a darkened hospital room had left every part of Sam aching. The parts of him that weren't aching were cold, stiff and bone-weary instead, and that really wasn't much of an improvement.

Absently rubbing his stinging eyes, he stiffly reached over to one of the seven styrofoam cups sitting abandoned on the nightstand and drained the neglected dreg of coffee that remained in it, grimacing as the stone-cold liquid trickled into his mouth.

A night of intense research had gleaned very little information that might have been of any use. All Sam had were fragments of answers to confused and fractured questions; Googling 'how do you break a curse that turned a nice young girl into a succubus nearly two hundred years ago?' hadn't exactly gleaned a wealth of useful information.

Adele herself hadn't been able to tell him how to lift the curse, only that doing so would release her, and by extension, Dean, from its insidious grip. Even now, Sam's naturally cautious streak meant that he wasn't one hundred percent sure that he could really trust her, but a lack of meaningful options meant that lifting the curse was as good a place to start as any.

About the only thing that Sam was sure about was that lifting the curse would involve finding out more about the woman who originally placed it upon Adele, the proverbial mother in law from hell. A salting and burning may well be required. Heck, Sam would happily toast the bitch purely and simply because doing so would make him feel damn good.

Armed only with a name and an approximate date of birth, he knew a long day and probably another even longer night of research, this time trawling through the Massachussets census records, was ahead of him; but first he had to eat, drink something that wasn't sugar-laden caffeine and try to regain some modicum of circulation in his stiff legs.

xxxxx

Dean heard the scrape of plastic chair legs against linoleum and the shuffling of unco-ordinated feet. Then he heard the door click closed. He had no idea what was happening, his mind was way too stuffed with fog to think straight – or even think at all. Where was he? What was that whooshing sound? That beeping? Why couldn't he move? What had Sammy got his boxers in such a knot over? Why did he appear to have a length of hosepipe shoved down his throat? Why did he feel like he'd been run over by a truck?

Random thoughts, random questions. All just floating there, taunting him, never quite coming together.

This, whatever this was, totally sucked.

xxxxx

Sam hadn't been wrong when he'd steeled himself for a long night of research. After a brief respite for food and fruit juice followed by a walk through the hospital, and a freshen-up in the mens' room, he'd felt vaguely human again; but now several mind-numbing hours and zero success later he was feeling like a wreck again.

Anastasia Kingburne. That was the woman's name. Not exactly a common name, so on the face of matters, Sam could have been forgiven for thinking it would be quite easy to find her amongst the town records.

But when had his luck ever been that good?

He'd been searching the birth, death and census records of every sizeable town in Massachussets, followed by the not-so-sizeable ones. He'd trawled the records for every possible variant of Anastasia and Kingburne, searching for other Kingburnes and finding several, all from around the same area and the same time, so presumably the rest of the family, including one Thomas Clarence Kingburne; heir to the Kingburne estate, Adele's erstwhile husband and, it seemed, all-round obnoxious asshole.

The guy had been dead a hundred and thirty years and Sam only knew him via words on a computer screen, but that didn't stop him wanting to punch the jerk's lights out.

But records on the final resting place of the mortal remains of the elusive Mrs Kingburne remained infuriatingly consipicuous by their absence. He couldn't even find a date of death, a cause of death, or place of death reported anywhere inamongst any of the interminably long lists of names he'd spent a day and a night examining.

Looking up over the top of his laptop at the stricken form of his brother, Sam suddenly had a moment of clarity. He could almost hear Dean's voice in his head, the really smug, annoying voice that Dean reserved purely for the purpose of pissing Sam off, and he could hear it, clear as a bell, mocking him for not thinking of this straight away.

She's a witch, genius.

What if you can't find any record of the cause of her death because there wasn't one, and what if there's no sign of a final resting place because there isn't one.

What if she's not dead?

xxxxx

tbc


	10. Chapter 10

Sam wasn't expecting any visitors when the knock on the door came. As it opened, a young nurse tentatively peered through, informing him that Dean had a visitor.

Looking back up at her, he blinked blearily through his exhausted confusion, and barely registered any surprise as Adele slipped quietly through the door, whispering a polite thanks to the young nurse as she did so.

It was only as the door clicked closed behind them, and she was standing in front of him that Sam's senses kicked in.

"Adele?" He nervously scraped his hand through his hair; "what are you doing here? I thought you said it would be dangerous for you to be near Dean?"

Adele's kindly face suddenly twisted into a cold smirk. "Do you think I care about that now?" She hissed.

"What?" Sam gasped, glancing round the room and thinking desperately of the best ways to put himself between the woman before him and his brother's hospital bed.

"Think now," she prompted in a patronising tone; "I should imagine you've been looking for me after your little 'chat' with Adele."

Sam blinked, swallowing hard as he tried to speak. It was then that he noticed the blood red hue of Adele's eyes. When he had last looked into those eyes they had been a soft copper brown.

"You?" He stuttered; "you're Anastasia?"

He shook his head to clear his thoughts; "but …"

"Adele? Yes, it's sad isn't it," she continued, the vindictive twist of her expression indicating that she felt the situation was anything but sad.

She shot out a hand and before Sam even had a moment to retaliate, he found himself flung against the back wall of the room, and held there by an invisible force like a ton weight was pressing on his chest.

"Can't have you pressing the call bell," she sneered.

"This simpering halfwit told you that I turned her into a succubus all those years ago, didn't she." She pointed down the length of Adele's body to reinforce her point; "well, I was happy to allow her to go on believing that, but the fact is, I did nothing of the sort."

"I'm the succubus," she added, with cruel satisfaction; "I possessed her."

Sam's heart froze; "let her go you freaky bitch," he gasped, as best he could with his lungs crushed in a vice-like grip; "and let my brother go – you've got no argument with him."

"I definitely have no argument with him," the succubus replied mockingly; "he was far too good a meal."

Sam's jaw clenched in anger, as she continued her diatribe; "I'm the one who was the victim of a witch's curse, back in Europe in the fifteenth century. I spent centuries flitting from vessel to vessel and eventually one of them travelled over and settled in the new world."

"I learned the art of possessing a vessel so subtly that they didn't even know I was there," she explained, flatly ignoring Sam as he fought to free himself from her crushing force; "and that way I was able to work my way through the higher eschelons of society and enjoy the trappings of that sort of life – that is to say, a better class of sustenance."

She knew that Sam was weakening under her power, she could also see that Dean had become agitated; either affected by her power or aware of Sam's distress, she didn't know. Frankly, she didn't care either.

"I learned moderation; to feed little and often," she smiled; "It doesn't do to kill off your prey every time; people start to take notice. So after this ridiculous little harlot went off and cheated on my son …"

"Your son?" sneered Sam, pulling in every strained breath like it was an Olympian effort; "supernatural freaks like you don't have 'sons'." Adele's jaw clenched as the succubus bristled at his vitriolic words.

"My vessel's son, then," she snapped; "if you're going to split hairs.

Now Sam could see Dean, trembling violently; his heart monitor squealing a frantic whine. He could see Dean's increasing distress and it scared him deeply. He had to take action, but what action to take? He'd been researching how to lift a curse that turns someone into a succubus; not how to kill one. The only information he'd found on that subject had been scanty at best, and all seemingly agreed that a succubus could be killed by an iron blade, but only when wielded by a woman. All his strength and formidable knowledge wasn't going to help him in this instance.

"… I saw my opportunity for some stability; a young vessel, stupid, weak and abandoned by her husband with nothing to lose. So I enlisted the help of a hunter friend – the only person who knew my true identity, and I told the little idiot that as she was so fond of whoring herself around to every passing peasant, I would see to it that she could spend eternity doing it. I told her I would turn her into a succubus."

"Then your hunter 'friend', hit her - knocked her out," Sam took up the story as he remembered Adele telling it, "with the hilt of his gun, and when she came round, her mother-in-law – your vessel - was gone, never seen again."

"Yes, I needed the hunter to recite the incantation that would make the possession possible. As for my vessel, she was vaporised by the force of me leaving her body," said the succubus with a callous shrug, "tends to happen when succubi leave their …."

"I don't care. Fix him," Sam snarled; tilting his head toward the bed, "get over there and fix him."

There it was again, that terrible smirk; "So rude," she commented coldly; "I haven't finished."

Sam struggled to pull in the deepest breath he could manage, his hand tightening around the hilt of the iron knife he was carrying in his jacket along with a selection of other weapons he'd taken as precautionary measures to his initial meeting with Adele. He tried desperately to pull away from the wall, knowing he was only going to grow weaker.

Dean's heart monitor was racing, he looked like a man in the throes of a violent nightmare, and Sam knew the time for talking was over; there was a rasping urgent quality to his breaths, forcing the ventilator to work harder. Dean was in extremis and Sam knew if he was going to act, he had to do it now.

He would have to get the bitch to come to him. If what he had read was true, then he and Dean were both screwed, but if there was a chance, the merest possibility of immobilising or weakening the succubus, he may be able to work something out.

He'd never know unless he tried.

"So," she continued; "I allowed her to go on living her life, believing she was a succubus – such a wonderful punishment. I tolerated her being so kind and considerate to her victims, it meant she fed me little and often. It was an arrangement that worked perfectly – well, until your brother came along," she spat contemptuously. "I even sat there quiet and dormant listening to her oh-so-heartfelt plea for you to break the curse. It was hilarious, she was so confused, poor dear. You'd never be able to break the curse - because there was no curse to break!"

"My God, you really love the sound of your voice, don't you?" Sam interrupted her, pouring all the contempt and disrespect he could muster into his strained voice.

The succubus turned, glaring at him; "how dare you speak to me that way," she snarled.

"You're lucky I'm speaking to you at all you freaky bitch," Sam replied, grimacing as she petulantly tightened her grip.

She strode toward him; "you idiot, do you think I don't know you've got a knife in your pocket?"

"You think you can kill me? You're even more of a halfwit than she is," she gestured down the length of Adele's body; "you're a hunter, so you'll know that I can only be killed by a woman's hand; so why are you even trying?"

Sam pulled and writhed against the unseen force that held him harder and faster against the wall as she approached. He grimaced as she touched him, running Adele's long, sweetly manicured finger down the side of his straining neck, traversing his chest and down to his hip where she slipped her hand into his pocket and drew out the iron knife.

Her eyes bored into Sam's; a look of vicious triumph gleaming in their crimson depths. "The only purpose this iron blade is going to serve is to … to ..."

Her voice suddenly stuttered as she recoiled, letting out a choking whimper. Sam suddenly saw that the cruel red eyes had faded back to the soft russet brown that he remembered. But Adele's face was anything but soft. Twisted with pain as she fought to hold back the alien force within her.

"Sam," she choked; "h-help … Dean." Sam, suddenly freed of the insidious force that held him, dropped weakly to his knees and watched with horror as Adele plunged the iron blade into her own chest.

"Adele," he cried, as her body lurched backward, the shrill screech of the succubus burning up inside her filling the room, pounding Sam's ears until he was forced to throw his hands over them, and curl up into the wall.

Through the chaos wrought by the dying succubus he could see Dean's body convulsing through the mayhem that seemed to go on for an eternity.

Surely someone would hear the madness, and come rushing into the room.

Then, as soon as it began, it ended.

Sam gingerly looked up from behind his arms which were wrapped tightly around his head as bright spots of light danced nauseously across his vision.

As he struggled dizzily to his feet, trying to ignore the ringing in his ears, he could see no trace of the succubus or, sadly, of Adele. The room looked oddly unruffled by the tempest that had just been unleashed within it.

And there was Dean. Sam's eyes locked onto Dean's body. Lying as still as death, Sam couldn't hear the beep of the heart monitor, nor the whoosh of the vent. The room was utterly, deathly silent.

The deathly cold grip of fear began to tighten around his throat.

Until Dean suddenly sat bolt upright, his eyes snapping wide open as he reached up and began frantically scrabbling at the tube lodged in his throat.

xxxxx

tbc


	11. Chapter 11

Dean suddenly sat bolt upright, his eyes snapping wide open as he reached up and began frantically scrabbling at the tube lodged in his throat ...

It was at that point that the shock which had gripped Sam as the succubus met her well-earned demise receded, and he sprang forward, flinging the door open with one shaking hand and yelling frantically down the corridor for help, trying, as he did so, to hold Dean down with his free hand and prevent him from ripping the ventilator tube out himself.

Within seconds the little room was filled with a flurry of activity. Sam was gently but firmly pushed aside as Dean's bucking body disappeared into a stern-looking crowd of medical professionals.

Inamongst all the furore of voices, rattling bedsprings and beeping machines, he could hear Dean calling his name and it was, at the same time, the best and most terrifying sound he'd ever heard.

Every fibre within his body wanted to charge in there, heave them all out of the way and be there for Dean but he knew for now, all he could do was stand helplessly on the other side of the room, out of the way, and wait for them to do their work.

xxxxx

One of the doctors eventually emerged from the melee and casually walked over to Sam; an older man with a salt-and-pepper flecked beard and a calmly knowledgeable bearing, Sam got the impression he was probably the senior presence in the room.

"Your brother seems to be making a remarkable recovery," he observed, not quite looking Sam in the eye. "So, what exactly happened?" He asked; "because what we're seeing here isn't making any sense."

Sam pulled in a deep breath; he hated this part of the brothers' conversations – trying to explain the unexplainable. "Uh, I don't know," he replied, nervously rubbing the back of his neck; "he just kinda woke up suddenly."

Glancing across the room, he could see that the emergency crowd around Dean's bed had largely dissipated, leaving just a young doctor and a nurse to treat their squirming, scowling patient. The doctor was busying himself examining Dean; now thankfully free of his vent tube, while the nurse was busy carrying out a barrage of checks on the terrifying tangle of wires and tubes that surrounded him.

"Sam!"

He flinched as he heard the harsh sound of Dean's desperate voice calling his name.

Mind racing, he tried to think of ways to explain Dean's awakening that didn't involve life or death struggles with supernatural beings and unwittingly possessed sad and delicate young girls who were in fact one-hundred-and-seventy year old ladies. He could see himself being admitted to the psyche ward.

"He, uh, started waking up a few minutes ago," Sam began shiftily, glancing round to where Dean's imploring eyes were latched onto him; "he was making a lot of noise, I think he was confused, maybe delirious and I was trying to calm him down. Sorry if you heard any disturbance …" Sam tailed off, trying to read the unreadable expression on the doctor's face.

"No, nothing;" the older man shook his head, "didn't hear a thing."

"Most strange," he added.

Sam smiled inwardly as his inner monologue reflected on the fact that the doctor had not the faintest idea how strange the situation actually was, and he felt himself relax a little. It wasn't unusual, Sam guessed; supernatural creatures and events often operated outside the rules of earthly science, that's why they were so damn difficult to predict and to deal with. But whatever, he was just glad that he only had his brother's miraculous recovery and not a freaky spirit fracas with a resulting dead body to explain away.

"Although," the doctor spoke up again, "Nurse Murray said she showed a visitor in here a little while ago. Where is …?"

"Oh yes," Sam replied, cursing at the need to think on his feet again; "she was a neighbour. She could only stay for a few minutes," he added, with a nonchalant shrug "she just wanted to say hi; but she had to leave a few minutes ago."

The doctor smiled wryly. "Well, it looks like her visit was very beneficial to your brother."

Sam nodded, feeling himself flinch at the unwitting accuracy of the doctor's words.

"Sa-am!"

Lying propped up in the bed, pale and irritably shrugging away the young doctor's wandering hands, Dean looked weary and lost, and needed Sam to be beside him.

The older man seemed to sense Sam's impatience to go and join his fractious brother and was just in the process of gesturing for him to do so when they were joined by the younger doctor.

Letting out a bemused huff, the young man rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

"Well, if I believed in those sorts of things, I'd call this a miracle," he smiled; "his vital signs are all normal; heart, pulse, temperature - I can't find a thing wrong with him. Yet, this morning when I checked on him, his body was shutting down; he was – quite frankly – beyond our help."

He looked at Sam and his older colleague as if for reassurance that he wasn't going mad, and Sam smiled, giving an apologetic shrug as he took the opportunity to slip away to his agitated brother's bedside.

xxxxx

Sitting himself down beside the bed, he gave Dean's tense shoulder a reassuring squeeze; "I'm here bro, just been talking to the Doctors; don't get your boxers in a knot."

"'Bout time," Dean grumbled softly, calming imperceptibly at the contact and making no move to shrug Sam's hand away. At a later time, he'd tell Sam that he let it stay there because Sam needed the comfort so much more than he did, and Sam would know that was total bullshit, but still say nothing because he was an awesome brother.

The look that passed between them was one of overwhelming, crushing relief.

"Of course," the younger doctor spoke up as he walked back toward the bed and Sam felt his brother bristle at the approach; "I'll need to do some more tests, because …"

"You ain't doing no more freakin' tests;" Dean's voice, broken through lack of use and raw from the irritation of the tube, protested; it's tone perfectly matching the irritable frown on his colourless face. "I've had enough of you all proddin' and pokin' me about. I wanna get out of this damn morgue."

Sam looked up with a sympathetic smile.

"You can forget the tests doc, that's all the proof you need that he's made a full recovery."

xxxxx

tbc


	12. Chapter 12

Dean sat on the sagging wooden fence and smiled as his horsey friend made short work of the second of two apples he'd brought with him.

"You'd better appreciate those," he scolded affectionately; "I was savin' them for a pie Sam wants me to bake, but I guessed I'd better bring you a treat seein' as I won't be coming back to Rockwood any more after today."

Butting him gently, the horse whittered softly into the side of his face.

"Plus," he sighed; "I guess my heart just ain't in it at the moment."

He ruffled the peachy grey muzzle that huffed warm, grass-scented breath into his face; "I know," he smiled sadly; "it sucks that you won't get to see this handsome face any more."

The peachy grey muzzle busily explored Dean's jacket pockets, suggesting that it wasn't Dean's handsome face the horse was interested in.

The sight of Sam walking toward him, hands thrust despondently in his pockets, drew Dean's rather one-sided conversation to an abrupt close.

"Well?" Dean enquired, as Sam walked up to him, absently reaching out to pat the horse's neck.

Sam took a deep breath before speaking. "The place is up for sale, there's a realtor's sign on the wall outside it."

Dean nodded silently.

"It's like she never existed," Sam added, a hint of anger sharpening his words; "no trace of what it used to be."

Dean shrugged; "I guess the realtors are coy about telling their buyers it used to be a brothel," he muttered bitterly; "even in death people are ashamed of her and what she had to do."

Sam hopped up on the fence next to his brother. "Well, you and I know the truth, Dean," he replied sincerely; "we know what she had to deal with and what she did. That's all that matters."

Concern flashed across his face as Dean's reply was cut off by a sudden shiver.

"You okay dude?"

"I'm fine, quit your fussin'," Dean replied gruffly, grunting as their friend's big conker-brown head butted him, almost knocking him off the fence; "just had a chill blow over me." He shivered again as if to reinforce the point.

Once released from the insidious grip of the succubus, Dean's recovery had continued apace. Convalescing back within the secure and familiar walls of the bunker under Sam's care instead of the clinically stark confines of a hated hospital room surrounded by anonymous doctors and nurses, Dean's strength had gradually returned, followed by his volume and much of his former vigour.

All that remained of his ordeal was a lingering pallor which Sam put down to not enough fresh air, and a listlessness which, knowing Dean all too well, Sam just knew was more down to undeserved guilt at Adele's unfortunate demise than any physical weakness.

Once again, Dean was cooking for himself and Sam, but his former bright-eyed, joyful enthusiasm wasn't there. Cooking and eating had now become a perfunctory act of necessity, not an act of gleeful indulgence as it had been before. Sam was missing the flour-coated culinary fiend of a few weeks ago far more than he ever thought he would.

In an attempt to rekindle Dean's enthusiasm and appetite, Sam had, that morning, challenged Dean to bake an apple pie for both of them. The attempt didn't seem to have worked so far, so he had followed that idea up with a suggested visit to Rockwood to visit the grocery store for provisions, and perhaps to visit other places too.

Sam hoped that this visit to Rockwood would provide fresh air and closure; the two things that he was convinced his brother needed to complete his recovery.

But right now, Sam was focussed on that shiver, and his concerned eyes remained on his brother; unconvinced by Dean's blunt reassurance, searching for any more signs that all may not be right.

"Wanna go?" he eventually asked.

Dean's nod was barely perceptible as he slid down off the fence to stand alongside Sam.

xxxxx

Suddenly, a faint breeze threaded its way through Sam's hair, billowing around the brothers as they began to walk away from the fence, and this time it was Sam that shivered. "We'd better get back, might be a storm getting up," he mused regardless of whether Dean was listening or not.

They both stopped in their tracks as another, stronger breeze, coiled around them, bringing with it a sudden chill.

"Did you feel that?" Dean muttered under his breath.

Sam nodded. "Yeah," he replied.

Before he was able to respond further, another breeze caught them, this time they didn't just feel it; they saw it. A faint swirl of colour, as soft and insubstantial as a wisp of steam, except that steam wasn't usually a rich, mahogany red. It flickered in their line of vision for a fleeting moment then it vanished.

They both stood, blinking against the sunlight as they stared intently at that spot, but they saw nothing.

Instead, they heard something.

Faint as a whisper, but between them, they heard a woman's voice

"Thank you."

Before either brother had had the chance to glance at each other, there she was; an ethereal, ghostly image, flickering like a candle flame in the breeze that swirled around them.

"Adele?"

She smiled as she looked back at them. Somehow her rich, russet tresses seemed more vibrant as they wafted and fluttered around her face like a halo of gleaming copper.

"It is her," Sam gasped; "it's Adele."

As they watched, another vaporous shape began to form behind Adele. A taller, broader figure, the nebulous form gradually morphed into the shape of a handsome young man, dark eyes gazing out from a kindly, ruddy face. His untidy black hair danced in the breeze that surrounded them, as he stood, strong, muscular forearms encircling Adele's slim shoulders in a lovingly protective embrace.

"She came back to me," he spoke in a voice as soft as honey, turning intensely dark, smiling eyes onto the Winchesters, as Adele leaned languidly back into the billowing linen of his rough, loose-fitting shirt; "thank you, now at last she's free."

As the Winchesters stood and watched, gaping like two idiots, Adele mouthed 'thank you both' one more time before her outline, and that of her lover began to diffuse, slowly fading away until their last residual hint of colour was swept away by another sudden gust.

xxxxx

They're back together," Sam eventually murmured, finally managing to find his voice. "Adele and her first love, finally reunited."

Dean nodded, and allowed himself a hesitant smile. "and she's free at last after all this time, adele and her farmhand can be together forever now."

They stood and stared at each other in bewildered silence for a long moment.

"Anyway," Sam muttered, breaking the silence; "are we gonna stand here all day?"

"Nah," Dean replied, smiling as he gave Sam a playful nudge; "c'mon, let's get back to the bunker; I'm starving, and that apple pie ain't gonna bake itself."

xxxxx


End file.
